This invention relates to a wire winding machine, and to substantial improvements therein.
The prior art is replete with a variety of wire winding machines. In many such machines, wire is wound on a reel which is supplied to the machine and which is then discharged from the machine when wound. Such machines frequently provide a pair of winders so that when one reel is fully wound, the wire may be cut and transferred to an adjacent empty reel for winding, following which the wound reel is then discharged, a new empty reel is supplied, and the cycle is repeated.
Such machines usually operate at high speeds. The mechanisms are therefore subject to stresses and wear. Too frequently they malfunction, slowing the effective winding rate of the machine.
In typical prior art machines, empty reels are normally supplied by rolling them into the machine, elevating them on an elevator, grasping them between arbors, winding wire on them, then disengaging them, lowering them on an elevator, and rolling them out of the machine on a ramp. Imperfections in the reels create problems in such feeding and discharging of them. Elevator mechanisms can malfunction. Wire hang ups (failure to clear snaggers on the winding arbors) cause malfunctions as a wound roll remains snagged or otherwise hung up by associated wire in the machine.
It would be of advantage to avoid these and related problems, and the improved wire winding machine of this invention does that.